The present invention relates generally to configuring product and service features, and more specifically to integrating demonstration and configuration of the features.
Many products and services attempt to provide benefit to consumers through programmable features. As the number of these features increases, however, the product or service often becomes increasingly difficult to understand and use. Typical VCRs, for example, allow for significant flexibility in programmed recording, tape editing, and channel programming. With this increased flexibility, however, has come thicker and more complex instruction manuals for the user to decipher to understand and use the product's capabilities. Often, a poor interface between the consumer and the product compounds the problem. With the VCR, for example, the consumer must use a complex remote control to access various features and enter information. The process can be tedious and frustrating.
This tension between increased programmability and increased complexity has ramifications other than end-user confusion. First, a consumer may be reluctant to purchase products, perhaps because in retail outlets, he finds it difficult to grasp and appreciate all the features of a particular product and, thus, difficult to assess whether the product meets his needs.
One way to avoid this problem is for retail outlets to have working displays of products. Even if outlets are willing to incur such an expense, a consumer may still have to read the manual or engage in lengthy discussions with a salesperson to understand the features of the product. Then, even if the consumer purchased the product, he would have to apply the information learned at the outlet at home with his own product. Therefore, if the consumer had programmed a display model of the product, he would have to repeat the programming for the unit he actually purchased. This requires the consumer to expend more time and energy understanding and programming the product with the additional complication that the programming interface at home may be different from that used in the retail outlet.
Not only do as these problems exist for the consumer, they exist for the retailers as well. Retailers must devote significant time and money educating their salespeople about products, who in turn must educate consumers. In addition, the outlet may end up serving as a "help line" for consumers who have questions about the products they purchased. All these expenses increase overhead and reduce profits. They also increase the time it takes to sell a particular product, which has further ramifications on the supplier or manufacturer.
The same problems exist with services, as they do with products. To increase their flexibility, for example, telephone companies often offer a barrage of telephone services including, for example, call waiting, call return, call answer, and caller ID. A user has the same difficulties managing these services as he would managing the features of a product. For example, users can choose various features for call answer (such as the number of rings before answering, types of greetings, etc.), or set various blocking features with caller ID. As with products, a consumer must educate himself about these services to see if the services meet the consumer's needs and to enable the consumer to understand and fully use these features of the services.
A poor understanding of the features often results in a returned product or canceled service. Additionally, the service providers (here, the telephone companies) must incur expense to educate their support personnel and consumers. This involves not just the initial sale of the services, but also ongoing support and customization that the consumer must perform through the telephone company.
In light of the foregoing, there is a need for a system to interface with consumers that expedites their education and understanding of product or service features while capturing the consumer's preferred configuration for the product or service.